by Lora Leigh
She simply shook her head, knowing differently. “I do not go to the village.”
At least right now. Her father had forbidden her.
“As time goes on, we will be allowed into the trees.”
“I doubt that.” Some of the humans living among their tribe had never even received an invitation to do so.
His smile was knowing, but he did not argue with her. Instead, he lowered his head further and whispered against her lips. “I wonder.”
“What do you wonder?” she asked breathlessly.
“If you taste as delectable as you smell to my wolf.”
She would have answered. She might even have denied him, though she did not think so, not when this was the only taste of intimacy she was likely to ever have.
But he gave her no chance to do either. He simply pressed his lips to hers, kissing her.
It was the most amazing sensation Una had ever known. Her lips did not merely tingle against his, they felt so much more. Pleasure. Fire. And the need for more and more and more.
She gasped her shock at the delight of it and felt his tongue tickle her own through her parted lips.
Her entire body pressed to his, an ache growing inside her for something she had no name for. She moved restlessly against him, the damp shift no barrier between his warm skin and her own.
One large warrior’s hand moved down to cup her bottom in a gesture so intimate, Una cried out from it.
And then he was gone.
FOUR
Nothing else had changed around her, but Bryant and the big brown horse had disappeared, as if they’d never been.
Una’s hand came up to press against kiss-swollen lips. He had been here. He had kissed her.
And then he’d been taken away? To go to whomever he was actually supposed to meet? The thought saddened her so greatly, tears burned her eyes.
“Why am I here?” she called out brokenly to the empty forest.
“This is a place the Chrechte come for answers,” a voice said from her left.
Una did not want to turn to face the other woman, but manners dictated she had no choice.
She turned to find a woman with similar features to Anya Gra, only much younger and without the sadness shadowing her cerulean gaze that was so much a part of the Éan’s celi di. Had she seen Una’s shameless display with Bryant?
The other woman shook her head as if answering the unspoken question. “This is a place of healing for some, a place for answers for others, some come here simply to find peace.”
“I see no one else.”
“That is often the way.”
“But earlier . . .”
“There is always a purpose in the meetings you have with others here. Remember that, little Una, braveheart.”
“I am not brave,” Una denied. “Not anymore.”
“The spirit of the girl still lives in the heart of the woman.”
“I do not think so,” Una said apologetically, sorry she had to disappoint the beautiful and clearly kind lady.
“I know your heart as you do not.”
“But it’s my heart?” Somehow the words came out a question rather than the statement Una had intended.
“Is it?”
Before Una could answer, the woman was gone, too, and then Una felt herself falling, air whooshing by as if she’d jumped backward off the highest waterfall in the forest. Not something she was ever likely to do.
She did not land with a jar, or a thump. She didn’t actually feel the landing at all, but suddenly she was on her sleeping furs, inside her own humble home and fully awake, the first rays of morning chasing the night shadows from the room.
* * *
Una dressed carefully for the feast to welcome the Faol warriors being held in the royal abode among the trees.
She’d been able to miss the last one held in the village immediately after the men’s arrival, not least because her father had forbidden her to go. But none who had been invited to the home of Anya Gra and her grandson, Prince of the Éan, were allowed to say nay.
Not without seriously offending the royal family of the Éan. And that neither Una, nor even her irascible father, was willing to do.
Rope ladders had been dropped to the village below so leaders in the village along with the soldiers could come into the trees. Those who could not climb the ropes, like her father, would be lifted on a pallet hefted with pulley ropes by the strongest among them.
It was no small task and Una could not conceive of ignoring its significance or effort by not attending herself.
And, well . . . she actually wanted to go.
A month ago, Una would have said with absolute certainty that the anticipation she felt now at the thought of attending the feast was impossible to contemplate. But that was before four sennights of visits to the Chrechte land of the spirits.
She’d been back on three different occasions and each time he had been there as well. The Faol warrior, Bryant.
He had apologized for leaving her so abruptly the first time and then said he was sorry he’d kissed her without leave. She’d admitted she probably never would have had the courage to give it. So, he’d said perhaps he would have to kiss her again without asking.
She’d replied that might be best.
It hadn’t been stilted, or awkward, but funny and light. And he had kissed her. Marvelously.
Though he’d never let his hand roam to her bottom again. She wanted to ask why, but never got the gumption to do so. She had so much more temerity in the spirit realm, but still . . . she was herself.
They talked of many things though. His annoyingly protective older brother, and irritatingly spoiled younger sisters. He told her stories of growing up in a big family and she told him of life among the Éan, daughter to one of the tribe’s greatest warriors.
She didn’t speak of her horror five years past and he didn’t mention his purpose in the village.
Their time always ended too quickly and she feared each sojourn into the spirit world would be their last, or on the next occasion she would not see him. For as much as the spirit celi di had claimed all meetings were with purpose, Una was convinced she saw Bryant by happenstance when he was there by some other greater motive.
And tonight she would see him in the flesh.
Would he remember visiting with her in the spirit realm? Would he seek out her company?
Or had her sojourns there merely been the conjuring of an excessively lonely mind fixated on a brief glimpse of a man whose very nature sent Una into a panic.
They could not be friends in the physical realm. Could they?
The very idea was absurd. He was Faol and should he approach her in person, in this place, she was most likely to fall in a faint of panic at his feet.
Sighing at her own shortcomings she had no idea how to overcome, though for the first time perhaps she wanted to, Una straightened her long-sleeved shift. The bodice she pulled on over it was made of supple leather her mother had painstakingly tanned for her. Mòrag had also dyed it heather green, the exact shade of the Éan’s plaid, and fitted it to Una’s figure with careful stitches that would last many years to come.
Una’s skirt was made of their tribe’s tartan, in the muted colors of the forest, the thin line the heather green that matched her bodice. Many women of the Éan dressed in leather skirts instead of the tartan, or dresses of the same because the leather wore longer. Some wore kilts only slightly longer than the men’s. Those were the warrior women, but Una was far from being one.
She wore no shoes, as most among the Éan were wont to do, but she’d taken care to scrub her feet clean and trim both her finger– and toenails.
Una had spent more time than usual brushing her long hair until it shone in soft brown waves around her shoulders and down her back. Being an eagle, it was several shades lighter than that of a raven, whose hair usually shone black. It was even lighter than either of her parents’, but Una didn’t mind.
She’d pulled it back
from her face and fastened the sides of her hair together at the back of her head with a leather thong.
She looked neat and as civilized as most Éan managed to do. They did not live as the humans among the clans, but clung to their Chrechte roots.
There had been a time when she’d wanted to emulate the humans, but that time was past. She desired now to be fully Éan, but she could not even manage that very well, could she?
Una could be in the sky with her sharp eagle vision, watching for intruders, but none had ever suggested she do so.
Because she had been deemed untrustworthy. Her shameful curiosity was no secret, not after the cost to her family and tribe to rescue her from her own folly.
“You look lovely, daughter.” Una’s mother’s voice thankfully broke into her daughter’s morose thoughts.
Una spun and rushed to embrace the other woman. “It’s been so long since you have been home.”
“My home is with your father in the village now,” her mother gently chided. “This place is the same as the day we left it for the village.”
Her mother said the same thing each of the few times she’d come into the trees to visit. The two-room dwelling was just as Una’s parents had left it. They had taken their prize bed with them and the little furniture they’d accumulated.
Being a home that had been passed down through the generations in their family, it was not sparse. Even with her parents’ things gone, the dwelling felt lived-in. Cupboards held dishes enough for two, though Una only used one. There was no cooking fire of course, all cooking had to be done at ground level, but dry foods could be and were stored on the few shelves and in the crannies.
Una had moved the furs she’d used to sleep on the floor of the main room since she was a child into the small bedroom, along with her clothing and personal things. The main room had the natural seats created by the branches of the tree integrated into their home and a small table her great-grandfather had made.
“Would you like water?” Una asked her mother with hospitality that was rarely exercised.
“Yes, dear, but I’ll get it myself.” Her mother moved to the swollen skin, filled from the water-catchers the Éan had placed high in the trees. “You must make this dwelling your own. One day you will share it with a mate.”
Una was only nineteen, but she’d long given up hope of finding a mate. Though she never said so to her mother. The thought of trusting another to sleep beside her filled her with a dread she’d never give voice to.
“Is Father already at the royal abode?”
Mòrag grimaced. “He is, giving Prince Eirik an earful about the wolves, if I have my guess.”
“What have they done now?”
“Naught, but to hear your father tell it, each one of them is responsible for every bad turn in our village, from the birth of a deformed kid by the neighbor’s goat to the deluge of rain we suffered through this past spring.”
“They have only been here a month.” And summer was well on its way to the solstice.
Mòrag shrugged and then smiled tolerantly. “You know your father.”
“Are the wolf soldiers . . . are they . . .”
“Kind?” her mother prompted.
Una could not imagine it, despite the way Bryant behaved when she’d met him in the spirit realm. After all, Una acted with far more boldness there than was her usual wont.
“Violent?” she asked instead.
“Not at all. Oh, they’re good hunters and strong warriors, but they are kind and rather more polite than our own soldiers.”
“They live among the civilized humans.” She never said civilized the way her father did, with a sneer in his voice.
But Una’s mother acknowledged Fionn’s attitude with a frown they both understood. “They do, though it has not made them any less fierce. The one they call Bryant smiles more than I’ve ever seen a warrior smile though. He seems to want to make friends particularly with your father. I cannot imagine why; Fionn has been rude to him at every turn.”
Una’s breath caught at the mention of the man she’d only met while sleeping.
“The wolves who took me smiled, too.” With sneers and cold evil in their compassionless eyes that she would never forget.
“Not all wolves are like the men who took you.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Of course, I do not put them all in the same school of fish just because they share a wolf nature.” As much as she might shy from Bryant were she to meet him in the flesh, she would not think him capable of the cruelty she’d suffered at the hands of his fellow wolves.
Mòrag looked very sad. “Sweeting, I very much fear that you do.”
“That would make me like them, Mother, hating an entire race.”
“You are nothing like those men, but neither are these clansmen.” Mòrag smoothed Una’s already shining hair. “You look so lovely this eve.”
Una ignored the compliment, choosing to focus instead on her mother’s other words. “Father doesn’t like them.”
“Your father hates all wolves for what those horrible Faol who took you did to you.”
“And him.” Una turned away, lest her mother see the pain filling hazel eyes just like her own. “They left him too crippled to fly.”
“Aye, but these men our prince has given leave to live among us? They were no part of that.”
“But they could have been.”
“Could they?”
Una was certain of it. All wolves had that viciousness in their nature. Not that all would give in to it. She sincerely hoped Bryant had never done so.
Mòrag sighed, the sound filled with the same old pain that plagued Una. “Daughter, you have suffered greatly, but not at the hands of these men. They will not hurt you.”
Trust her mother to see the terror Una worked so hard to hide. “I just don’t understand why Prince Eirik had to let them enter our homeland.”
“Because change must come.”
“But why?” Even as Una asked, part of her longed for change. If not among her people, then in her own heart. So she would not live in such fear any longer.
“It has been foretold.”
“And that makes it so?” she demanded.
Though, now more than ever, she had reason to trust the visions of the celi di.
“You know it does,” her mother said in a tone that showed her shock at Una’s words. “Our seers have led us since time immemorial. We cannot begin to doubt their guidance now, not if we want your children to have a hope at life as it is meant to be lived.”
“As slaves to the Faol?” Una asked, her worst worries coming to the fore.
“In secret,” Mòrag emphasized. “Hiding from the peoples who live in this land with us. It is time for the Éan to come out into the sun.”
“No,” Una said with anguish she could not hide.
“Oh, daughter.” Mòrag pulled her into a hug, but Una would not let herself relax. The tears would come then.
And she would not give any more of her tears to the wolves who had done her and her tribe such irreparable harm.
FIVE
Una’s mother had been right, Bryant smiled far more than the Éan warriors were wont to do. Especially her father.
He had a cheerful nature when they’d met in the spirit lands of Chrechte, but she’d thought again that it had been because they were in a place out of time. A place where no harm could come to them and the trials of physical life could not assail them.
But it seemed at first glance as if the man she had met while she slept was exactly like himself in the physical realm.
Right down to being more handsome than any soldier had a right to be. Even his scars, those at least he hadn’t had in the other realm, only made him look more appealing. He was no perfect man, who had not faced hardship or battle, but a real warrior who had the marks on his body to prove it.
A larger-than-life presence, he seemed every bit as big and a great deal more intimidating with
it, in the flesh. The warrior braids in his mahogany hair depicted his life. He’d told her what each one was for on their last spirit-plane visit. The three on his left side commemorated important events in life as a soldier for the Balmoral pack.
The one on his right was in honor of the grandfather who had died ten years past, bequeathing Bryant both his name and his sword. Her brows drew together in confusion as she noted a second thin braid beside the first. It had not been there before. The ends of this braid were wrapped with bits of string.
If her eyes were not deceiving her, and considering her superior eagle sight, that was highly unlikely, those bits of string were the exact shades of green and brown as her hazel eyes.
She stared into eyes dancing with humor and something else she refused to name. The man near took her breath away.
And that had never happened before.
Not in this physical world where the nearness of strangers was more likely to send her into a fit of panic than passion.
“We have not met.” He put his hand out to take hers, his storm-cloud gaze telling a very different story. “I am Bryant of the Balmoral.”
Her father knocked the hand away with his walking stick before Una could even think to take it. “Do you know no better than to proceed without a proper introduction?”
“Thank you so much for offering, Fionn.” Bryant’s tone could only be described as smug.
The man liked besting others in cleverness. She’d noted that even in the spirit plane. She’d found it charming there; here in the flesh, it was more likely to cause her father to erupt in an apoplectic fit.
Sure enough, Fionn’s face turned red with fury as his eyes snapped a promise of retribution.
“Bryant, may I introduce my daughter, Una?” Moving slightly so she stood between Una and Bryant, Mòrag jumped in to fill the gap, as she had so many times over the years with Una’s father’s less-than-polite ways. “Una, this is one of the Faol soldiers our prince has welcomed to live among our people.”
Even if Una had not been meeting the man these past weeks while they both slept, she had seen him arrive in the village. She understood her mother’s move for what it was, an attempt to protect Una from being forced to take the man’s hand in greeting.